At an impasse on the Phillips quote. Still don’t know the Atwater context.
The concept of coded language exists, but in this specific case it’s being used to supress discussion of legitimate issues by tarring them as racist.
Right. But how they tried to attract them is exactly the crucial issue here.
Discussed Atwater and Phillips. Steele is using “Southern Strategy” differently than you are.
These things are either not racist or were done by a small minority of Republicans.
But, there were no legitimate issues in what iiandyiii was talking about.
“Welfare queens” and “takers” are legitimate issues.
They never were in this country.
Here is the context:
"Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.""
Not with phrases like “states’ rights”. Or do you really think that meant (in most cases) something other than “states’ rights to oppress black people”?
You’re twisting things, or just plain wrong. Perhaps only a small minority of Republicans went to speak at Bob Jones U, but until recently, every major Republican candidate for President spoke at Bob Jones U, an openly racist institution (unless you’re going to claim that banning interracial dating is not openly racist). Almost half of Republicans in Congress voted against the MLK Day holiday – that’s not a “small minority” (and a majority of Republicans opposed it up until the last minute). And, until recently, most southern Republicans supported and even used displays of Confederate imagery for political purposes. Perhaps they didn’t see it as racist… but then, neo-Nazis probably don’t think displays of the swastika are racist.
Not to mention MacBird. Such a commie that LBJ!
ISTM that he’s saying the opposite.
His point was that in 1954 there was overt racism. When Wallace ran in 1968, there were code words. By the time Reagan ran in 1980 even that was off the table. What was left to appeal to the Wallace voter was so detached from race that they “are doing away with the racial problem”.
his broader point was that Reagan would win the south based purely on non-racial issues. For more from that same interview see here.
Yes, I do. The south has been sort of an outlier politics-wise for a while, and people resent the federal government imposing things on them.
The thing about Bob Jones is that it was an under-the-radar policy for a while. A lot of people either don’t know about the dating policies of universities at which they’re speaking or are willing to tolerate things they don’t agree with as long as it’s not some sort of symbol. Sort of like Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.
I don’t think opposing a MLK holiday is at all racist. Or supporting Confederate symbols. As a practical matter, once they get interpreted that way, then they take on that symbolism and it’s not worth getting people riled up about it. But there’s nothing racist about them.
You’re entitled to your stance on these issues, but they were and are legitimate issues. I’m not going to argue this point, though. As I said before, it’s a No True Scotsman logic.
I wonder if he thinks that the use of “states rights” by George Wallace had nothing to do with racism. I was working in the 1968 election - I knew it did. So did everyone else.
To be fair, speaking at Bob Jones might be more about appealing to the fundie base - though clearly the place being racist didn’t give any of them pause.
The racism of the Southern Strategy was not the direct confrontational racism of the past, but the racism of gradual change. Let’s not go too fast, here, let’s give people time to get used to these things. Bill Buckley famously made it sort of the white man’s burden, to educate the Negro and bring him up to sufficient standards to take an equal place. In due time. Take our foot off of his neck, but one toe at a time, let’s not rush it.
So, we can say that many Republicans did not throw themselves athwart progress in civil rights? All very well. What efforts did they make to nurture progress, what risks were they willing to take? What tangible actions did they take to repudiate such racism? Kind died for his beliefs, what sacrifice did they offer?
Also IIRC, the modern KKK, inspired by the movie Birth of a Nation, was founded in French Lick, Indiana, the hometown, ironically enough of Larry Bird.
“Welfare queens” was never a legitimate issue. The original “Welfare Queen” was a white crook who was engaged in a life of crime that involved most methods of fraud, welfare abuse under a fraudulent name being only one of those crimes. When Reagan began telling the story, (in multiple versions as he made them up as he went along), she became a woman who was on welfare who gamed the system because the system was corrupt. The impression he created was that she was one of a multitude of black women in Chicago or other cities who were simply living the high life on the dole.
I don’t think this is right. His point is that in 1954 they could get away with overt racism to try and attract racist white voters. Then, in 1968, overt racism would turn off enough voters that it was counterproductive, so they used code words to appeal to those racist white voters, which were still a huge group. By 1980, even the code words started to become counterproductive, so they came up with new code words (that’s where “welfare queens” came from) and abstract ways of “blacks get hurse worse than whites”, because the racist white voters are still a large group that the Republican party needs.
This almost entirely stems from the Civil War and Civil Rights, and no other issues (in a significant way). Southern whites resented the federal government taking away Jim Crow (and other means of oppression), which were so central to the lifestyle and identity of white southerners for a hundred years after the Civil War, that decades later they still hadn’t gotten over it (for the most part). Oppressing black people really was central to Southern white life and Southern white identity.
No, it’s not like Obama and Wright. Wright did not support policies that continued a tradition of centuries of oppression. They are not comparable at all.
If there’s nothing racist about Confederate symbols, then there’s nothing racist about the swastika. If the swastika is not a racist symbol, then there is no racist symbol in the world.
Only overtly non-racial, not purely.
More “The Democrats were the real racists”. Could have saved us some time and said so.
You’re supporting “states’ rights” without recognizing what the term has historically meant, then. I mean, shit, if you don’t recognize what the Confederacy stood for …
Reagan used the welfare queen story to show that welfare was rife with fraud, people were getting it who did not need it because the safeguards in place were not adequate. Thus millions of taxpayer dollars were being wasted. When he was governor Reagan reformed welfare in California so it was targeted to the truly needy. This saved the California taxpayers millions of dollars, while sparing those who actually needed support. The original welfare queen was a white crook who used fraud to obtain welfare under multiple identities while living an extravagant lifestyle. She was a perfect example of what was wrong with the welfare laws and why Reagan’s approach worked better.
This is a perfect example of the Orwellian nature of the racial code word accusations. There is a policy that is expensive for the taxpayer and bad for many of the people it is supposed to benefit. Republicans have a better policy that has been proven to work in the nation’s largest state and yet to criticize the failed policy is “racism”. The only way to no be called a racist is to pretend that liberal policies are failures. Meanwhile the victims of those policies are abandoned.
Thus opposition to unlimited welfare is racism, opposition to school busing is racism, opposition to South African sanctions is racism, anti-crime policies are racist, support for federalism is racist, etc… until all disagreement with leftist orthodoxy is racist.
He also used it to villify poor black people, in order to appeal to white racists. Or perhaps that was a happy coincidence that just happened to benefit him electorally.
We can disagree on welfare without either one of us being racist. You are vastly overstating such claims of racism. But campaigning on “states rights” in the South? That was meant to appeal to white racists. Utilizing Confederate symbols and imagery, and supporting their public display? Meant to appeal to white racists.
There were tons and tons of white racists in the South (and elsewhere) who were suddenly disenchanted with the Democratic party after Civil Rights. The Republicans tried to get those voters, and largely succeeded, for national political races. This was a big part of why they held the white house most of the time between '68 and '08 (28 years to 12 years).
I don’t say the Republicans are a racist party, or that most Republicans are or were racists. But the party made a deliberate choice to try and appeal to racists for many years, as the Democrats had for a century before that. Black people don’t vote overwhelmingly Democratic because they’re dupes or stupid. They have legitimate reasons, just as most people have legitimate reasons for why they vote the way they do. And the Southern Strategy is a huge part of that reason.
I’ve already agreed that code words exist. But that doesn’t mean that everything is a code word.
“States Rights” means the states are free to do X. X can be anything. In the context of the Wallace campaign, it was obvious to everyone that he meant suppress the blacks. That doesn’t mean the term has this meaning in all circumstances.
”Legitimate issue” has a specific meaning in the context of this discussion. It means that the people making these arguments meant them in good faith and not as a coded appeal to racism.
I don’t agree with RR about “welfare queens”, which are an exaggeration and distortion IME. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t genuinely believe it and intend his message to appeal to others who similarly believed it.
I don’t think that’s correct, in the context of the point he was making. As noted earlier, there’s more to that quote at the link above, and the part that immediately preceded the money quote is:
So the point he’s making here is that non racial issues are enough to carry the South these days, and the subsequent quote needs to be understood in the context of this point.
What he was saying is that it’s possible that a purely non-racial issue might appeal to some racist on some sub-conscious level, but if it’s that abstract you don’t need to worry about it.
Emphasis added. That’s a far cry from saying Reagan deliberately chose these issues because he knew they contained coded racism.
ISTM that you’re interpreting “doing away with the racial problem” as meaning “we won’t get caught”. But I think he meant simply that these are not racial issues, and we don’t need to shy away from legitimate issues just because of the possibility that they might also appeal to some racist on racial grounds.
I don’t think this is true.
Yes, it is like Obama and Wright, for purposes of the limited comparison that I made. Which is, again, that Wright said a lot of offensive things that Obama wouldn’t approve of, but Obama was willing to overlook them (as he might with an old uncle, IIRC) as long as they were not the focus of public attention.
I think there are any number of differences, in that the Confederacy is a part of American history, and many Americans - ancestors of people down south - died for this cause, plus the Confederacy was about more than slavery, although that was obviously a huge part of it. In addition, the Confederacy was not as much of a moral outlier in the context of contemporary morality as was Nazi Germany.
When used for political purposes in the south, it has usually had this meaning.
He might believe it, and he might also believe that it works as a coded appeal to racism (which it does and did). They’re not mutually exclusive.
He was saying “we won’t get caught”, and he was also implying that the racist whites were already (mostly) won over to Reagan.
Which part? Was this sentence true: “Oppressing black people really was central to Southern white life and Southern white identity.”?
It would be similar for comparisons like Pastor Hagee and McCain. It’s not similar to the Bob Jones U thing – there was no tradition of Democrats speaking at an openly racist institution.
It was more than just a “huge part” of it – it was nearly all of it. So said the Confederate VP at the time, so said the state declarations of secessions. The fact that it is part of American history and many Americans’ ancestors died fighting for it makes it politically controversial (in some places) to attack Confederate imagery, but it doesn’t make the imagery itself any less offensive and racist.
Not in the context of contemporary morality (which does not say good things about our morality at the time!), but it is just as much of a moral outlier in the context of modern morality as Nazi Germany.
Possibly. But Reagan was pretty clear on what he meant. You’re saying that the word is so loaded that even if he clearly used it in a different context that he was relying on an appeal to racists who would realize that what he really meant was that he would keep down the blacks. Sounds dubious to me.
OK, but if a guy says something that he might well believe in its straightforward meaning, then self-serving speculation from his ideological opponents that he really meant some other offensive meaning does not carry much weight.
See above.
That the only aspect of Southern life that they resented being overridden by federal mandates was racism.
I give up on this one. My point stands, but I have nothing further to add.
It does. Because those who use the imagery are not supporting the pro-slavery aspects of it; they are supporting the other aspects. By contrast, anyone who sports Nazi imagery is intending to convey support for Nazi ideology.
Confederate imagery is one of those things that’s offensive mostly because it’s offensive, in a sort of circular way. Everyone knows that the people who use this imagery do not support slavery. But once enough people claim that it’s offensive, then it becomes insensitive to use it, because you’re offending these people. (More below.)
But the point is that when recognizing people from other times most people understand that you need to judge them by the standards of their time.
The important point here is that even if you disagree with this (and the prior comment), it still holds for purposes of this discussion. Because as long as many people do believe in this, or something similar, then there’s no basis to accuse them of using coded racism.
Consider that the Founding Fathers were mostly slave-owners. Is it offensive to honor these people? Now as it happens, there are people who think it is, but it hasn’t gained widespread support yet. But imagine that this changed, and enough people decided that they were offended by the honoring of these slave-owners that people stopped honoring them. Does that mean that anyone who currently honors them intends to send a coded pro-slavery message?
I think Reagan was fully aware of the coded meaning, even as he explained it in other ways. A seasoned politician would have to be aware of the powerful coded message it sends, and this would be beneficial to a Republican at the time.
It’s not that he meant some other offensive meaning, it’s that they deliberately used it for the ‘side benefit’ of attracting white racists. The Southern Strategy was a cynical play, and the ‘perpetrators’ (and originators) were opportunists, not necessarily racists. They deliberately tried to get white racists to vote for them and their candidates – but that doesn’t mean they were racist people themselves. They were cynical opportunists… or in other words, politicians and political operatives.
Perhaps not the only aspect, but certainly the primary aspect (and by far the most important).
Then the Nazi supporters can claim that they are not intending to convey support for the Jew-killing aspects of Nazi ideology… just the other aspects. Racial supremacy was as vital to Confederate ideology as it was to Nazi ideology. I don’t believe all people who display Confederate imagery are racist, but the non-racist ones are ignorant of the absolute centrality that white supremacy held for the Confederacy. And if they are aware of this centrality and still display the Confederate flag, then they are either racists or so indifferent to racism as not to matter (historically, indifference to racism and oppression has been nearly the same thing as support of racism and oppression).
I want to educate people. I want to make Confederate-flag displayers aware of the centrality of white supremacy to Confederate ideology. This might anger them, and they may feel defensive, but that’s part of the price of education sometimes.
I also want people to be aware of the cynical opportunism that was the Southern Strategy, and I want people to be realistic about how the South really was in the recent past.
If they honor slave-owners without repudiating the owning of slaves, then they are sending that message whether they intend to or not. And many who honor the Founding Fathers are unaware of their slave ownership, or the particular brutality with which some (like Washington, unfortunately) treated their slaves. Washington was an extraordinary man, but he also was guilty of some extraordinarily brutal crimes against humanity that were, unfortunately, extremely common at that time in the USA. The ignorant should not be spared from such criticism simply due to ignorance; hopefully, such criticism will spark many to educate themselves.
I don’t call them (the modern Founding Father or Confederate honorers) racist, but they are either racist, utterly indifferent to racism, or ignorant of the racist aspects of what they honor. The first two categories deserve harsh criticism, and the third deserves a lesson, which sometimes can be harsh.